Dear Bunty, Imagine my surprise

The General Manager
Customer Service Centre
London Underground
55 Broadway
London SW1H 0BD


Dear Sir or Madam,

Monday 27th November

My intention in writing this letter is neither to angle for compensation nor to achieve refund, it is simply to register my disbelief with you.

For many months now I have been travelling to work using the same train combination – namely the Jubilee Line from Kilburn to Finchley Road and then the Metropolitan Line from Finchley Road to Great Portland Street. You are right, there is nothing to disbelieve about this – in fact I receive an excellent service between Tuesday and Friday, and even at the weekends. I can leave my house at 9a.m. and be at my office front door at 9.25 a.m.

When I moved to Kilburn I came from several years of Victoria Line misery: early and unadvertised terminating trains at Seven Sisters, having to wait up to twenty-five minutes for trains to Walthamstow late at night, impossible heat every day, spurious ‘regulating the service’ announcements, and signal failures with impeccable regularity. It was a joy to move to Kilburn onto a line that was fresh and without the Victoria Line’s foibles. I have noticed, however, now the buzz has worn off, a rather unusual phenomenon.

Every Monday morning, my day begins with a 9.30 meeting at my office. It may (or may not) surprise you that I have not managed to be at this meeting for about 2 months. With regularity, my Monday morning trip to fulfil my contracted obligations takes ten minutes longer than it should. As I say, having lived in Walthamstow for so long, I became numbed to such journey delays. It was only thinking about it this morning that I realised the ridiculousness of the situation – I left ten minutes earlier this morning, only to arrive 50 minutes after I set off. I gather that this was because ‘someone was reversing a train into the platform at Baker Street and all the trains are queuing’. Quite apart from the fact that I thought trains were ambimotive and this therefore should not be quite so unusual, I am distressed that my journey to work every Monday, and usually only Monday, is delayed by such an incredulous amount of time. Is there a reversing train at Baker Street timetabled into events at about 9.35 a.m. ?

You may by now have realised that my gripe with London Underground is that every day my journey runs fantastically, apart from Monday when it is ALWAYS delayed. I cannot for one moment begin to imagine what logical reason there is for this. Perhaps the person controlling the sub-suface lines at Baker Street on Monday mornings is the same person? Perhaps his/her unique way of controlling involves creating delays. Should there have been engineering works over this particular weekend, I might have been able to understand; to my knowledge there were no engineering works that would cause ‘trains to be in the wrong place’. Similarly, there were no delays on the Circle Line (and subsidiaries) according to your posters at Great Portland Street.

I’m not sure you are able to answer this expression of disbelief. We all have problems getting out of bed on a Monday, but this should not really affect a giant trainset – how does Monday differ from any other day? Tuesday for example? I can tell you that my journey tomorrow will be perfectly on time. I’m almost certain that the same would not be the case in a city such as Berlin. It is not infrastructure, it is simply unbelievable.

Thank you for reading this rant, if indeed you have got this far. I shall leave twenty minutes earlier – I will let you know with an apology if I manage to make my 9.30 a.m. meeting.

Yours in disbelief




Jonathan Lee